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We’ve all had the experience of looking for someone in a crowd…

Whether we’re picking a friend up from the airport, picking our children up after school, or scanning through old yearbooks, searching for someone we’ve lost contact with over the years…

We’ve all had some experience of looking for someone.

I’m reminded in particular of a cartoon I loved when I was a kid called, “Where’s Waldo?”

Waldo was always hidden in a crowd, much like a person at the airport, and your job was to find him. He always wore the same outfit: a red and white striped hat with a red ball on top, a few red and white striped shirt, rimmed glasses and blue jeans.

The problem is hundreds of other characters looked similar to him. If you were to find Waldo, then you had to know exactly who you were looking for.

***

Finding Waldo hidden in the crowd was meant to be difficult, but it’s supposed to be much easier to find Jesus, because HE COMES TO US. He jumps off the page, so to speak. 

In today’s Gospel, for example, Jesus passes by John and his disciples. We might call it a chance encounter. Many Jews were expecting God to visit them, but they didn’t know exactly when he would come or what he’d look like.

But John the Baptist knew who he was looking for. He recognized Jesus and pointed him out to his disciples, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

***

Like John the Baptist, we all want to see Jesus, and we want to point him out to others. The question becomes, where do we find him?

Certainly, Jesus can be found in his Word and in the Eucharist…But there is one more place that we must look.

Turn to your left and to your right. Jesus can be found right there – hidden in the faces of our family, our friends, and our children…

It’s a simple but profound truth that we can often take for granted: Jesus is present in all of us. As Saint Paul says in our second reading, “Your bodies are members of Christ… [you] are a temple of the Holy Spirit.”.

If we look with eyes of faith, then we can see Jesus hidden in the face of our spouse who laughs at our jokes, or comforts us in our sorrow.

We can see Jesus hidden in the cheerful face of our children, who find peace in our embrace.

We can see Jesus hunched over in the weak, the aging, shivering in the vulnerable, the hungry, the rejected. Jesus is present in all of us.

The question is, “Are we looking for him in others?” Or are we somehow blinded to the divine presence in ourselves and in others?

***

God is love. Whenever we perform an act of love for someone else, God acts through us; God acts with us; God acts in us.

God wants to USE YOU to be his hands, his face, and his voice in the world. He wants you to reveal his love to others in the ordinary moments of life.

Be that listening ear, that shoulder to cry on, that affirming voice that assures your family that they are important and loved deeply…. by you and by God.

***

At times it seems easier to find Waldo hidden in a crowd or a friend at the airport, than it does to see Jesus.

But he is present in all of us, which is why we can truly say, “To love another person IS to see the face of God.”

Are you looking for him? If so, he’s hidden in the person next to you.

Growing up, there was a television show I used to watch called, “Are you afraid of the dark?”

Each episode began with kids sitting around a campfire at night and one of them would put a flashlight in front of their face and tell a scary story.

The stories always took place at night and there was always an evil character.

For example, one episode was called The Tale of the Night Nurse. In the story, a group of kids get locked inside a hospital overnight, and the ghost of an evil nurse haunts them! Will they survive?

You’ll have to watch the episode on YouTube or iTunes to find out!

***

But I will say this. Today’s Gospel sounds just like an episode of “Are you afraid of the dark?” It takes place at night and there is an evil character, King Herod, who wants to kill the baby Jesus!

The magi, on the other hand, want to worship Jesus. But if they are to find him, then they must journey through the countryside at night.

What makes that journey so dangerous is the fact that there were often robbers and wild animals hiding in the bushes, waiting for innocent travelers to pass by.

If the magi are to reach Jesus, then they must be alert.

However, they are not afraid – they are not afraid of the dark, of the robbers or the wild animals hiding in the bushes… The magi know that there is someone else at work in the night…

God is with them, leading them to Jesus by the light of a star.

And that makes all the difference. They are not alone.

***

At some point in life, we may feel like we are journeying through the night alone.

Maybe we’re unsure about our future…maybe we’ve been bullied at school… maybe we’re stuck looking for a job…or mourning the death of a loved one…

Maybe we’re struggling to stay committed in a marriage… we’re barely paying the bills…or we’re just overwhelmed by the stress of ordinary life….

Whatever our challenges may be, the magi remind us not to be afraid of the dark; rather, they tell us to look up and see the star.

They show us that God is with us, guiding us through the night.

***

Those episodes of “Are you afraid of the dark?” always have scary endings, as if evil wins in the end.

But that’s where our stories are different.

Like the magi, we have nothing to fear. God is with us, even in the night, guiding us ever closer to his kingdom.